Quickway Hibachi opens in Rockville (Photos)

Work in downtown Rockville? You may have a new spot for lunch. Quickway Hibachi is celebrating its Grand Opening in JBG's new retail development at 275 N. Washington Street. This is north of Rockville Town Square, and part of the Phase II redevelopment of Rockville's town center.

They have hard copy takeout menus, and you can also see their menu online. "Hibachi" may make you think of grilled, but they do have a good selection of sushi as well. You can combine these for a takeout bento box. The dining room is pretty nice, too, if you prefer to dine-in.

Ted's 355 Diner closed in Rockville (Photos)

Retro yet gleaming, Ted's 355 Diner has been a popular dining destination for those seeking a modern version of yesteryear's diner experience. Alas, the nostalgia is over, as patrons found when they pulled up for a meal this weekend. "What's going on?" "Are they closed?", many asked, before heading back to their vehicles in disappointment.

Indeed, Ted's 355 Diner has closed permanently. It's currently unknown if the space will be leased to another restaurant, or replaced altogether by another structure. The diner has occupied a prominent roadside spot on Rockville Pike for many years.

Here are some photos for history's and posterity's sake:

Rockville residents, businesses express concerns at Southlawn Industrial Area listening session (Photos)

The City of Rockville held two listening sessions on the Southlawn Industrial Area Feasibility Study Thursday, at the David Scull Community Center on First Street. A presentation by consultant VHB gave a background on the current conditions of the industrial area bordered by Gude Drive, First Street, Lincoln Street, Lofstrand Lane and North Horners Lane.

The industrial area is currently in a bit of a decline, according to statistics presented by Nancy Fox of VHB. In 2011, 945 people were employed in the Southlawn Industrial study area, down 17% since 2002. Most are in the construction field, she said. Of the 27 properties there, 3 are currently at least 50% vacant, the vacancy rate is 17% overall, and vacancies are trending upward in recent years. In contrast, industrial areas described as "North Rockville" and the "Rockville submarket" are trending in a more positive direction in terms of vacancy rates. 43% of workers in the study area live within 10 miles of Southlawn, and 11% live more than 50 miles away, Fox reported.

Dan Lovas of VHB gave an overview of the transportation data the team has gathered at this early stage, although he said they will be collecting much more over the summer. Right now, they've identified North Horners Lane as the road that appears to be suffering from the most "collector" and cut-through traffic related to the industrial area. He noted "we're not seeing really a ton of tractor-trailer activity on Horners," but rather, smaller trucks. Lovas said the study area has a "pretty decent sidewalk system" with some gaps, and an unusually-high number of bicycle facilities for an industrial zone. That includes 2 Capital Bikeshare stations. The goal in the study, Lovas said, will be to better connect all of these bike facilities.

The floor was opened to attendees, who had a variety of concerns. One immediate question was, why wasn't the entire industrial area along Gude Drive being included in the study. Susan Swift, Planning and Zoning Director for the City of Rockville, said the study was intentionally limited to the area in question. She said this specific industrial zone had been a problem area for residents on 3 occasions over the last 15 years. Those controversies led to a call for a study of this type.

"What we were attempting to do was follow up on the study requested," Swift explained. In light of the study area's proximity to residents, the city hopes the study will "interface with the problems, the opportunities, but - frankly - the problems of the industrial and residential being so close to each other," Swift said. The most recent flareup was related to a self-storage facility proposed for the property next to Maryvale Elementary School.

Some industrial landowners and business owners expressed concern that the study and problems might lead to the industrial area being phased out by the city. Referring to resident complaints, one business owner argued most bought their homes well after the industrial area was in operation. "You should not live in an industrial area if you can't handle it," he said. "You should have moved to Washington, D.C., where they don't have that anymore."

One resident replied that he did not feel there was animosity toward the businesses. In talking to 200 of his neighbors related to a neighborhood issue, he said only 1 expressed negativity or a desire for the industrial area to be replaced. Fox noted during her presentation that many of the businesses support the local community, such as providing repairs and services.

Paul Mayer of VHB said concerns about the industrial use being eliminated were premature. The idea of the industrial use disappearing at Southlawn is "not a realistic expectation," he said. However, he added, the study will examine what the current market forces and trends are in the Southlawn area, and how they might be changing.

Going forward, Mayer said, there will be another public meeting in September. Between now and then, VHB will gather more traffic data, hold interviews with stakeholders, assess property values, and develop land use alternatives.

Choice Hotels street renaming request needs more...choice in Rockville

The decision on what - if anything - to rename Renaissance Street to in Rockville Town Center has been delayed again by the Rockville Planning Commission. Last night, representatives of Choice Hotels appeared before the commission in person. Previous discussions, at which Choice did not appear to personally plead the company's case for the name change, were unsuccessful.

Despite the in-person plea, the commissioners did not find the present options any more appealing than they were a few weeks ago. Commissioner Charles Littlefield, echoing the efforts of many in the community to establish a Rockville Science Center and promote science in the city, suggested Galileo as a potential alternative. Chair Don Hadley said he didn't think most people visiting the street were there for science. Hadley and some commissioners thought Hospitality might be an appropriate name. He said it would show the city's appreciation for Choice locating its headquarters there, and also emphasize that the town center is a welcoming place.

Commissioner Jack Leiderman wasn't as enthusiastic, noting that there are Hospitality Ways all over the country, "one off every off-ramp." He said he wasn't so much concerned with having a name that reflected a particular industry, as having one that was specifically related to Rockville. "I'd like some more choices," Leiderman said.

More choices are what the commission will get, a Choice representative promised. "I appreciate that none of these names resonate with the [commission]," he said. He added that the company was very appreciative of the commission's time in taking up the request, and that it is very important to them. Choice will now try to generate some additional name possibilities over the next couple of weeks, and submit them to city staff.

The commission will then revisit the discussion of the change at its July 22 meeting, Staff Liaison Andrew Gunning said.

Are Fortune 500 companies overrated in economic development?

Montgomery County has failed to attract a single major corporation to relocate here in over a decade. Much less draw a Fortune 500 company. The county's elected officials have yet to be called on that record of failure by the local media. But in public comments on economic development, many of those officials - and their political operatives - have argued that we don't need Fortune 500 companies in our future. Instead, they've said they're focused on small ventures in small offices. Indeed, a recent economic development effort to fill vacant office space in the county was limited to small companies only.

Are Fortune 500 companies "overrated", as these folks suggest?

I would say the answer is clearly, "no." Large corporate headquarters are not only sources of high-wage jobs, but also generate economic activity in other sectors around them, from hospitality to finance to real estate. More importantly, Fortune 500s can serve as halo companies, economic development trophies that can attract companies of similar caliber or aspirations.

But enough about what I think. There was a great article by Ana Swanson in the Washington Post Business section recently that backs up what I've been writing about economic development and Fortune 500 companies since 2006.

Rather than becoming outmoded dinosaurs, Fortune 500 companies "are more vital to the U.S. economy than ever," Swanson wrote. "In 2014, the Fortune 500 companies together had revenue that equalled 72% of U.S. gross domestic product, up from nearly 59% in the 1990s," she added.

The county has also struggled to attract and foster startups. It recently booted several startups from a facility it owned in Rockville to make way for a cybersecurity center there. That won't build trust in Montgomery County among entrepreneurs. Should you commit to an incubator you might get kicked to the curb from next year?

And how strong is Montgomery County as a cybersecurity brand around the world? Councilmember Hans Riemer has talked a lot about cybersecurity. But then it was revealed that the county government was running on Windows 2000 last year, four years after cybersecurity "guru" Riemer took office. A county that runs on perhaps the most vulnerable operating system in the world should probably not be talking about cybersecurity.

Is the information economy bigger than Fortune 500s? Not quite.

"For all the buzz about start-ups and small business in the United States, the massive corporations of the Fortune 500 are actually more important to the economy than ever," Swanson reported.

Should we be depending on small business to create the high-wage jobs the county has failed to attract over the last decade in the private sector? Not according to Swanson.

"Although politicians often talk about the importance of small business creation, most U.S. jobs do not come from start-ups," Swanson asserted. "According to research from George Mason [University], half of all jobs generated by newly formed companies disappear after five years."

With all of the solid evidence that we are on the wrong track, why are our elected officials so blasé about attracting Fortune 500 companies? The most obvious reason is to distract from their utter failure to attract any. "We don't need them anyway," they'll suggest, hoping to continue to get a free pass from the media.

But a second reason is increasingly becoming clear: corporate headquarters take up large real estate footprints. That's land that developers could make a lot of money on with residential development, not office space.

With the vast majority of councilmembers beholden to the developers who fund their campaigns, it's not surprising they're heading in the direction of making the county the region's ultimate bedroom community. "Live-Work-Play" is rapidly devolving into "Live-Drive-Pay", as more commuters are living in, but working outside of, Montgomery County.

That the "independent" office market report prepared for those officials would echo their call for converting most office space in the county to residential housing is not a surprise. That they can continue to get away with an economic development policy that appears to be at cross-purposes with reality and common sense is.

Rockville employee compensation discussion to return for vote July 13

A tabled discussion over Rockville city employee compensation and classification will return to the Mayor and Council for action at their July 13 meeting. Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton and Councilmembers Virginia Onley and Beryl Feinberg have requested further information from the consulting firm hired by the city, Evergreen.

Newton confirmed at last night's meeting that their request had been submitted to Evergreen, with a deadline of July 1 to receive data on the potential for a hybrid system that could employ salary step increases. The current proposal that failed to receive majority support would have utilized annual leave, rather than steps.

Rockville City Manager Barbara Matthews said the cost of the additional study is $4000. The Mayor and Council voted unanimously last night to place the compensation issue on the agenda of their July 13 meeting. A final vote on the issue is likely that evening, as well.

Photo courtesy City of Rockville

Report on MoCo's moribund office market offers the wrong solutions

It's not news to landowners, developers or readers of this blog that Montgomery County's office space market is as moribund as its economy. But the county's Planning Board is scheduled to be briefed on the dire situation during its meeting this Thursday, June 25. An advance copy of consultant Partners for Economic Solutions tells just how bad it is, and makes recommendations of what to do next. Unfortunately, it sounds like the report's authors are mostly telling County officials what they wanted to hear.

• Montgomery County's office vacancy rate has increased in the last year
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• 11 county office buildings are nearly or totally vacant
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• GSA could vacate 1.1 million square feet of office space in the county over the next 5 years, a devastating blow on the horizon
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• Montgomery County's share of the total jobs in the region has steadily declined over the last 10 years, during which time no major corporation relocated to the county

Interestingly, downtown Rockville is noted as one of the few bright spots in the County office market by the report.

But some of the report's analysis and suggestions are off base. For example, one approach PES suggests is simply giving up on office space and converting it to residential. While developers and planners have already been taking that approach from Bethesda to Wheaton to Clarksburg, to continue on that path will generate a transportation disaster. Roads and Metrorail already overwhelmed by the current volume of commuters cannot handle a county where all the jobs are in DC and Virginia. Smart growth demands jobs be created, not vacated, across Montgomery County to reduce commuting distance. Instead, according to the report's data, MoCo planners and councilmembers have allowed 558,000 SF of planned office space to be canceled or converted to residential. And notes only a handful of the many planned projects and existing office spaces being converted to residential or canceled. We're literally becoming the DC area's ultimate bedroom community.

Secondly, the impact of telecommuting and shrinking office sizes are grossly overstated. The report attempts to partially blame those trends for vacant office buildings. But the same report acknowledges that the vast majority of jobs created in recent years are in retail and restaurants. You can't fold jeans or make a frappucino over the internet. There were no great numbers of private sector, high-wage jobs added in Montgomery County over the last decade. So you can't say telecommuting is the new normal when few of the new jobs can be done from home.

Thirdly, it also oversells the success of office space in high density urban areas within Montgomery County. While downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring indeed are desirable locations for employers, neither have attracted a major corporate headquarters in over a decade any more than the suburban areas of the county did. Wheaton is right on the Red Line as well, but is also a dead zone for office space.

If transit was the sole determining factor, Wheaton would be doing well. In fact, the report concedes this point on Page 40. It also notes that Wheaton and Glenmont are not convenient to I-270 and I-495, but fails to point out that two planned freeways (Rockville Freeway and Northern Parkway) that would have given both immediate access to the freeway system were canceled by the county decades ago. Whoops.

The report states - contrary to the current County Council's stated "transit-only" future, and its own final recommendations: "Subareas that can offer Metro and good roadway access within a walkable mixed-use environment will be the markets that recover most quickly."

Meanwhile, the Pike District of North Bethesda has been designed in the New Urbanism model for smart growth and walkable communities, and is on the Red Line as well. Yet it, too, has failed to attract a major corporate tenant. The only significant addition was a reshuffling of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch from Tower Oaks to Pike & Rose, which is simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Strangely, the report claims a severe drop in the "White Flint" vacancy rate, without providing any data on what specific real estate and leasing moves account for their claim. Highly suspect.

If new urbanism and transit are so hot for employers, why is the Pike District utterly tanking for new corporate office space? Why are a gleaming new Class A office building at 4500 East-West Highway, and a revamped one at 7550 Wisconsin Avenue - both walking distance to the Bethesda Metro station, restaurants and nightlife - mostly vacant?

Finally, the report closes with a waving-the-pom-poms endorsement of the current County talking points for vibrant, walkable urban developments with transit, and infill development. That's great. But if you strip the corporate, government and government contractor jobs out of DC and Northern Virginia, guess what? They would both become ghost towns like the report claims single-use, auto-dependent suburban office parks are now in Montgomery County. All the window dressing and vibrancy in the world doesn't make a difference if you don't have any jobs or affordable housing for young professionals.

Yet the report suggest abandoning current and planned office space in places like Glenmont and the northern I-270 corridor. That suggestion is contrary to smart growth.

I'm not saying it isn't good to have great urban areas. We have them, and they are working well in many respects. But to claim that urbanizing the rest of the county is the magic solution to attracting jobs is disingenuous.

We have to look elsewhere to find the answers. The authors of the report have partially conceded this in briefly referring to road access. They've noted that more successful jurisdictions are offering better incentive packages. It costs too much to operate a company in Montgomery County and the state of Maryland. Gridlocked roads drive up the costs of labor and shipping, among other expenses. There's a reason you get charged your shipping rate by zip code - you pay more when you live in an area with congested roads.

And we need to target industries like defense and aerospace that are never going away. They happen to need the kind of larger square footage that the I-270 corridor and upcounty can provide - research labs and testing and manufacturing facilities won't fit in tiny urban footprints. The report does not even consider those types of employers, much less Fortune 500 companies, and buys into what our local elected officials and Wall Street crooks keep trying to sell the American people on - that the future is only in the "knowledge economy" and small companies. Wall Street outsourcers, Warren Buffett and China certainly are hoping you'll believe them.

Many parts of the report sound as if the writers had been briefed by County officials and politicians, rather than taking a completely detached and independent look at the situation. They should not be referring to the failed Nighttime Economy Task Force at all, much less praising its utter failure. Those apparent communications have tainted the objectivity of the report.

And nowhere does it mention one of the County's major traffic and economic development liabilities - the lack of direct access to Dulles International Airport. It's impossible to take seriously a report that doesn't talk about that at all. You know about the Nighttime Economy Task Force, but say nothing about the competitive disadvantage of lacking access to the preferred airport of international businesspeople and corporations?

Again, this suggests the research process was poisoned by political interference. "Don't you dare talk about Dulles Airport or new Potomac River bridges in this report, do you understand?"

There is a lot of valuable data in this report, but its final recommendations are too tailored to what the Montgomery County political machine and its developer patrons want to hear. A report that tells us to keep going the way we are currently going is not going to bring about change.